When BCBAs start thinking about adding IEP advocacy to their work, I often see them jump straight into the business details.

What should I call my business? Do I need a separate website? Should I use my name? Do I need a logo? Should I include BCBA in my business name?

These are reasonable questions, and they're all things you'll eventually need to consider. But I think there's a more important question to answer first:

What do you want people to understand about the work you do?

(If you're just starting to explore IEP advocacy as a BCBA, grab my free Special Education 101 for Behavior Analysts guide first.)

More experience doesn't automatically mean more clarity

I've been a special educator, a BCBA working in homes and clinics, a school consultant, and an IEP advocate. All of those experiences inform the work I do today, but they aren't interchangeable roles.

If I listed all of them every time someone asked what I do, they would probably leave the conversation more confused than when they started.

That's where positioning comes in.

Your credentials aren't your positioning

As BCBAs, we're used to describing our work through our credentials, assessments, interventions, who we help, and clinical expertise. We talk about functional behavior assessments, behavior intervention plans, data analysis, parent training, and consultation.

Those are important parts of our professional experience. But think about what happens when a parent is looking for someone to help with an IEP.

They probably aren't searching for someone who provides "behavior-analytic consultation and assessment interpretation." They're thinking:

• My child's behavior is getting worse at school, and I don't understand why.
• The school says my child is making progress, but I'm not seeing it.
• I don't know whether the services in this IEP are actually meeting my child's needs.
• I have a meeting coming up, and I don't know what questions to ask.
• I feel like we're having the same conversations every year without anything changing.

Notice that these aren't necessarily requests for behavior analysis. They're problems families are trying to solve within the special education system.

Your positioning needs to connect your professional expertise to those problems.

This matters especially for BCBAs, because IEP advocacy is not simply another name for the work you're already doing. You may have years of experience attending IEP meetings, analyzing data, consulting with educators, and supporting students with disabilities. That experience is valuable. But independent IEP advocacy also requires an understanding of special education policies, procedures, advocacy practices, and the boundaries of your professional competence.

So where does branding fit?

Your brand is what people begin to associate with your work.

Maybe you want to be known for helping families navigate complicated behavior concerns. Maybe your strength is helping parents understand a specific special education eligibility area. Maybe you're particularly skilled at helping teams work through disagreement or inclusive practices.

Or maybe you don't want to specialize quite that narrowly. That's okay, too.

You don't have to limit your entire business to behavior or autism just because you're a BCBA. And you don't have to abandon your behavior-analytic background to become an IEP advocate. What matters is that you're intentional about what you offer and how you communicate it.

Building an advocacy practice is its own skill set

There's a lot more to building an IEP advocacy practice than deciding to offer advocacy services, and I think BCBAs can underestimate this, especially when they already have years of professional experience.

You may be incredibly knowledgeable about student behavior, special education services, and how schools operate. You may already have a successful consulting practice. You may even have families asking you to help with their IEPs.

But that doesn't automatically mean you've figured out how to position your advocacy work, communicate your services, or build a business around them.

Those are different skills. And they're skills you can learn.

Your experience as a BCBA is part of what you bring to advocacy. It doesn't have to define everything your advocacy practice can become.

Want to learn how to become an IEP advocate? Learn more about Pivot Into IEP Advocacy.